The assumption underlying the C-Net piece is that allowing media access is the same thing as allowing public access. Certainly this is the traditional assumption but one that the Web expressly rejects. Being told what to think by C-Net or the New York Times is no better than being told what to think by politicians. Having journalists select the 'facts' to present and put their own 'interpretations' on them is not the same thing as transparency.

In this particular case the journalist who was excluded has a particular history of manipulating the story to his own advantage, he admits to being the author of the 'Gore invented Internet smear', a deliberate fabrication that has been exposed numerous times but the establishment media continues to repeat.

What we are actually discussing here is ways in which governments can make information available to the people directly through technolgies such as Semantic Web. Security has a place of course but I was actually speaking on the history of Web politics and my own role setting up the first poltical site on the Web.